{"id":36872,"date":"2025-09-22T18:34:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T18:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/36872\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T18:34:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T18:34:06","slug":"george-takei-to-lead-banned-books-week-urging-the-fight-against-censorship-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/36872\/","title":{"rendered":"George Takei to lead Banned Books Week, urging the fight against censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK — Actor-activist George Takei’s<\/a> next project is on behalf of a longtime passion \u2014 the right to read.<\/p>\n

The American Library Association announced Monday that the 88-year-old Takei will serve as honorary chair of Banned Books Week<\/a>, which takes place Oct. 5-11. Libraries and bookstores around the country will highlights books that have been censored, from Maia Kobabe’s \u201cGender Queer\u201d<\/a> to Toni Morrison’s<\/a> \u201cThe Bluest Eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember all too well the lack of access to books and media that I needed growing up. First as a child in a barbed-wire prison camp, then as a gay young man in the closet, I felt confused and hungry for understanding about myself and the world around me,\u201d said the \u201cStar Trek\u201d actor, who spent part of his childhood in a Japanese internment camp during World War II.<\/p>\n

“Please stand with me in opposing censorship, so that we all can find ourselves \u2014 and each other \u2014 in books.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previous honorary chairs for Banned Books Week, established in 1982, include Ava DuVernay<\/a>, LeVar Burton<\/a> and Jason Reynolds.<\/p>\n

Takei will share leadership with honorary youth chair Iris Mogul, a first-year student at the University of California, Santa Cruz who has been active for years in anti-banning campaigns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK — Actor-activist George Takei’s next project is on behalf of a longtime passion \u2014 the right…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[28482,1597,288,921,9710,93,1595,61,60,1596],"class_list":["post-36872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-28482","tag-article","tag-books","tag-celebrity","tag-censorship","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}